*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD
I once read a story about ants. If you place a hundred red
ants and a hundred black ants inside a jar, nothing happens. They crawl around,
each minding their own space. But if you shake the jar hard and set it down,
the ants suddenly turn on each other. The red ants see the black ants as
enemies. The black ants see the red ants as enemies. They bite, claw, and kill
one another, forgetting that they were never enemies to begin with. The true
enemy was never the ants. The true enemy was the hand that shook the jar.
When I reflected on this simple tale, I realized how true it
is for us Filipinos. Look at what is happening now. Families, friends, and even
communities are divided, not by hunger, not by natural disasters, not even by
foreign invaders, but by politics—by whether one supports the Marcos
administration or remains loyal to former President Duterte. Every day online I
see people hurling accusations at each other. Duterte supporters calling Marcos
supporters blind. Marcos supporters branding Duterte loyalists as ungrateful.
People ending friendships, neighbors turning cold, and families refusing to
talk to each other—all because of politics.
But just like the ants in the jar, have we stopped to ask:
who is shaking us?
The truth is that ordinary Filipinos—whether you wear red or
green, whether you shout “Marcos pa rin” or “Duterte pa rin”—carry the same
struggles. We line up in the same grocery stores, our pockets hurting from high
prices. We worry about the same floods, knowing that ghost projects and
substandard flood control leave us defenseless. We sit in the same traffic,
wait for the same promises of better governance, and struggle with the same
weight of corruption that bleeds our nation dry. Hunger, poverty, and injustice
do not ask for your political colors. They hit us all the same.
And yet, we fight each other. We aim our anger at the wrong
people—at neighbors, co-workers, friends—who are just like us, trying to
survive. Meanwhile, those who truly benefit from our division quietly laugh.
The ones shaking the jar are not the Marcos supporters nor the Duterte
supporters, but the opportunists who want us distracted. They are the corrupt
officials, the dynasties who never let go of power, the businessmen who bribe
their way to contracts and deliver ghost projects. They are the political manipulators
who profit from fake news, lies, and online hate.
But there are others too. There are political parties biding
their time, waiting for Marcos and Duterte supporters to destroy each other so
they can return to power. There are enemies of the state like the CPP–NPA–NDF
who thrive when society is in chaos. There are foreign forces shaking our jar:
China, which eyes our seas; and Uncle Sam, who would love to see us divided so
it becomes easier to plant more bases in our land. Even criminal syndicates,
drug lords, and POGO operators have a stake in keeping us weak and distracted.
And yes, let us not forget the oligarchs—those who for decades monopolized
industries and now wear the mask of “kakampink reformers.” These are the same
families that captured the economy after 1986. Instead of the state controlling
them, they now control the state.
And why are they so powerful? Because our government is too
weak to stop them. The truth is painful: our Constitution, drafted in 1986,
tied the hands of the state. It was built in the name of protecting democracy,
but in reality, it empowered the oligarchs and entrenched dynasties to hold us
hostage. That’s why the state cannot stop outside forces from shaking our jar.
Maybe the time has come to admit the truth: this Constitution has failed to
protect the people. It must be changed or amended if we are to free ourselves
from those who shake us for their own benefit.
Sometimes, I even ask myself: what if there is truly no hope
for us to unite at the national level? What if the divide between political
colors is too deep, too poisoned by years of hate? Then maybe, the answer lies
closer to home. Maybe the provinces can lead the way. If we cannot unite as a
nation, then perhaps governors and local leaders can begin by uniting their own
provinces—not in partisan politics, but in development. I have seen what
Governor Reynaldo Tamayo has done in South Cotabato, how he has focused on
education, welfare, and good governance rather than wasting energy on national
divisiveness. I know there are other good governors out there quietly doing the
same. Why not more of them?
A province with enough economic development can solve what
national politics has failed to solve. A province that uplifts its farmers,
educates its youth, and creates real opportunities can stop communist
insurgency without firing a bullet, and it can calm separatist unrest by
proving that government can be just and fair. Why must we always wait for
Manila to move, when our provinces can act now? Why can’t governors stand up,
work with their constituents, and prove that unity can begin at the provincial
level? Perhaps the answer to the shaking of the jar is simple: let the
provinces get out of the jar, so no one can shake them anymore.
I hesitated to write this reflection. I have friends on both
sides—Marcos loyalists and Duterte diehards. I don’t want to lose friendships.
I don’t want to be seen as taking sides. But silence also has consequences. If
we do not speak of the hand shaking the jar, we will go on tearing each other
apart, blind to the real enemy.
Our society must learn a painful lesson: the person in front
of you is not your enemy. The jeepney driver who supports Duterte is not the
one who keeps you poor. The farmer who admires Marcos is not the reason why
your child’s classroom is falling apart. The real enemies are corruption,
injustice, and impunity. The real enemies are those who keep shaking the jar
while we remain too distracted to notice.
We need to look beyond personalities and political colors.
We need real reforms that go deeper—reforms that finally break dynasties,
reforms that truly hold leaders accountable, reforms that give the state the
strength to protect the people, not the oligarchs. We need a new system that
cannot be hijacked by the same families who have ruled our lives for decades.
More than anything, we need healing. Because as long as
Marcos supporters and Duterte supporters see each other as mortal enemies, the
true jar-shakers win. And when they win, the Filipino people lose.
I return to the story of the ants. Inside the jar, they
forget that they were never enemies. They forget that they only started killing
each other because someone shook them violently. What a tragedy it would be if
that became the story of our people—that we allowed ourselves to be divided
forever, blind to the hands that shake us.
But tragedy does not have to be our destiny. We can stop. We
can choose to turn our anger away from each other and focus it where it
belongs. We can ask the harder questions: Who really benefits when we are
divided? Who profits from our hate? Who is shaking our jar?
And if the national government cannot give us the unity we
need, then let the provinces rise. Let the governors take the lead in building
real progress where it matters. Let every province create its own strength so
that its people no longer live in fear of poverty, insurgency, or neglect. Let
us learn to build unity from the ground up, one province at a time.
If we can find the courage to do this, then maybe one day we
will finally see each other not as enemies but as fellow Filipinos—brothers and
sisters trapped in the same jar for too long, but now ready to climb out
together, free at last from the hands that shake us.
The time has come to stop tearing each other apart. The time
has come to look up, to recognize the hand shaking our society, and to finally
say: “Enough.”
